Patricia Routley: I saw R. gallica once in an American garden. Phillip Robinson explained to me that the rather insignificant almost-single red gallica was the species rose from which R. gallica officinalis descended. Linnaeus had named R. gallica so in 1759 because the specimen had been sent to him from France. These days HelpMeFind.com has been able to put the date back to before 1554, but if the next rose is its child, R. gallica has got to be a lot older than 1554. R. gallica officinalis, the semidouble red gallica has a date of before 1240. Some synonym names are ‘Apothecary’s Rose’, ‘Red Rose of Lancaster’, and ‘Rose de Provins’, named after a historic town in France where it grew in the time of the Crusades. (It has nothing to do with the Provence Roses which are the centifolia roses from the southern provinces of France.) Thibault IV returning from the Seventh Crusade in 1250 might have brought R. gallica officinalis back to England. Henry III’s second son, Edmund Crouchback, Duke of Lancaster, took this red rose as his emblem, which explains the ‘Red Rose of Lancaster’ synonym. The town of Provins became famous for its expertise in making highly-prized rose products using the perfumed dried rose petals, rose water and rose oil obtained from this red rose. The main street of the town consisted only of apothecaries’ shops and this industry persisted there for more than six centuries. The rose became known as the Apothecary’s Rose and was the official one (officinalis) that the apothecaries kept in their cupboard for making conserves, honey, tincture, troches, vinegar and syrup. Their medicines.were said to strengthen the stomach, prevent vomiting, stop tickling coughs, and were of great service in treating consumption. Well, that’s what the apothecaries would have had us believe, but these days scientists have not found any basis for its purported medical properties. R gallica officinalis came into my garden from three different sources. The first one in 1999 from the Pinjarra Heritage Rose Garden; the second from Susan Ronk in 2000 under another name; and the third in 2003 from the old Eildon Nursery in Kendenup. All three plants are doing well here. They sucker a little, but not excessively. I enjoy the simpleness of the bloom with its prominent stamens and when the plant blooms, the matte leaves are still new and deep green and the red semi-double flowers with gold spangles are set off beautifully. They open wide and are 3 inches across with about three layers of petals. Later the leaves take on a coarseness and look untidy. The leaf is distinctive in that the terminal leaflet has a long stalk and the side leaves are sessile and have almost no stalk. There are no glands on the leaf edge. The hips are orange to red, medium size, matte, glandular, rounded to pear-shaped fruit, with extended sepals which fall off singly. The canes with a few scattered thorns are about three feet high and make a bushy and branched plant. It can be grown in dappled shade and indeed seems to dislike too warm a site.

Thibault IV... brought [this rose to Provins]... It retained its perfume in the dried petals. The apothecaries of that town initiated an industry, making medicinal preparations and other confections from R. gallica 'Officinalis'; the industry flourished for over six hundred years, selling its products worldwide and bestowing them upon such notable as Joan of Arc, Louis XIV, and Napoleon... Opoix, the same physician from Provins whose early nineteenth-century writings document the town's industry, reported how the Rose of Provins became known to the English in the late thirteenth century. About 1277 the Count of Egmont (Edmund, the first Earl of Lancaster), son of the King of England, had been dispatched to France to avenge a murder. After accomplishing his mission, he returned to England with red roses, the first of which Thibault had carried from Syria. The Count of Egmont as head of the house of Lancaster adopted this same rose on his coat of arms, thus the Rose of Provins also became known as the Red Rose of Lancaster...